ESPN’s highest-paid sportscaster with an annual salary of nearly $8 million, Stephen A. Smith, shared his thoughts on the Brooklyn Nets signing ex-NBA star point guard Steve Nash to be their new head coach and he was not happy about it.
Stephen A. Smith believes “if anybody deserves this opportunity absent the experience that, obviously, he has as a coach,” it is Nash, the ESPN host thinks this hiring is an example of “is white privilege.”
Smith then expanded on the problem he has with Brooklyn’s hiring:
“This does not happen for a black man. No experience whatsoever? On any level as a coach? And you get the Brooklyn Nets job? I know that Kyrie [Irving] and KD (Kevin Durant) have both signed on this. I know they both support this move. But I’m thinking about a champion that is Ty Lue, passed up. I’m thinking about a guy who built the foundation for the Golden State Warriors in Marc Jackson, passed up. I’m thinking about the years that Sam Cassell has served as an assistant, first in the nation’s capital in D.C. and now with the Los Angeles Clippers, passed up.
It’s for a guy — my guy, one of the best guys you could possibly meet in your life and may do a fantastic job. But a guy that has no experience whatsoever, in these times where we’re making all of this noise about social justice — I got news of y’all. I have said this to people on numerous occasions, right here on this show: Yes, that was the tipping point, George Floyd’s killing, his murder. Violence against black men who are unarmed, all of that stuff is true, but the frustration, the protest and all of these things that you’ve seen in the streets throughout America terminating from the black community and the disenfranchised communities is that proverbial glass ceiling and the fact that it breeds a level of frustration that we can’t even put into words sometimes, you just wanna scream.
Wanna scream to the high heavens, ‘How the hell does this always happen for somebody else other than us? Why do we have to be twice as good to get half as much? Why is it that no matter what we do and how hard we work and how we go through the process and the terrain of everything, somehow, someway, there’s another excuse to ignore that criteria? To ignore those credentials and instead bypass it and make an exception to the rule for someone other than us. So I’m depressed right now because I have to bring that up.”
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NBA analyst Jay Williams didn’t appreciate what Smith was spewing, so he called him out on Twitter:
“Come on SA,” Williams said. “Steve Nash being chosen over Mark Jackson/Ty Lue is not ‘White Privilege’. 2 superstar black athletes ultimately made the decision & we know who they are and what they are about.”
